


The Little Things

by elstarwarslover



Series: The Search for Perfection [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: And about herself, Gen, Implied Conditioning, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Lucio's not in the first fic, Symmetra learns things about Vishkar, but he will be in later ones, but it's in there, nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 08:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10681155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstarwarslover/pseuds/elstarwarslover
Summary: Satya learns about the mess that is Vishkar Corporation.





	1. Aftermath

__ _ There is dust on the floor again.   _

   Satya never expected that dust, of all things, would continue to bother her throughout her adult years.  She never expected that her adolescent hatred of dust would only develop into an adult loathing once she escaped the corporation’s unremarkable schools.  She never expected that as her problems became more complex, and more important, that she would continue to detest something as meaningless as dust.

_    Why is there dust on the floor again? _

   It wasn’t that dust was particularly hard to clean.  She had the use of Vishkar’s hard-light technology, so cleaning was a matter of flickering the floor’s “tiles” (always in the same order, of course), and letting the dust on top of them fall to the ground below.  It wasn’t, then, that it was difficult to clean that bothered her.  Nor did it offend her that it clouded the clear blue of Vishkar’s lasers; not any more than a crooked picture frame or misplaced book, at least.  Perhaps it was that it would be so easy to fix completely; a line or two in Utopaea’s coding would automate the entire system, and she would never have to look at a speck of dust in her own home again.  This was not the only way in which she disagreed with Vishkar’s engineers, of course.

_    There should not be dust on my floor. _

   That they would be so lazy as to ignore her requests for months on end bothered her.  She had even gone so far as to write the code herself, so all they would have to do would be to implement it in the city’s subroutines.  And with such a small fix, one fewer imperfection would reside in the world’s perfect city.  For is that not what Utopaea is?  A city of perfect order, of perfect harmony, of perfect… perfection?  That struck Satya as being wrong.  Although it had been drilled into her head long ago that Utopaea was the pinnacle of human development, she had had her doubts.  After all, plenty of Utopaea’s citizens mocked her openly, despite her contributions to the corporation, despite her abilities, despite the fact that they needed her.

_    Despite the fact that they need me. _

   As if on cue, her intercom buzzed, and her boss’s voice filled the cubicle that was her home.  “Ms. Vaswani!  Congratulations on your success in Rio de Janeiro!  Meet me in my office in 30 minutes, and we’ll discuss your next assignment.”

_    Rio de Janeiro was not a success. _

   From the very beginning, her negotiations in Brazil had gone sour.  She supposed that she ought to have known things would not go well.  She had fumbled her introduction, for one, something that Ms. Vaswani hadn’t done in a long time.  Satya, the person; Satya, the idealist; Satya, the introvert; Satya was allowed to fumble introductions, but Ms. Vaswani?  The persona, the negotiator, the construct?  Ms. Vaswani did not fumble introductions.  Ms. Vaswani had not fumbled an introduction, barring this last one, since her creation.  Satya knew that she should not hold herself to such high standards, even when she took on the identity of the woman who was perfect; after all, if even Vishkar Corporation allowed dust to remain on its otherwise pristine floors, could not Satya do the same?

   Naturally (although such could not be proven, would never be admitted), her fumble from the onset led to a failed negotiation with the city’s mayor.  And so she donned yet another persona, that of Symmetra.  Symmetra was the force behind Ms. Vaswani’s words.  Where Ms. Vaswani bartered, Symmetra stole; where Ms. Vaswani asked, Symmetra demanded; and where Ms. Vaswani followed Vishkar’s orders to the letter, Symmetra took whatever liberties she could to protect those around her.  It was an odd contradiction, Satya thought.  That the same person could embody so many identities, each one a reflection of herself, and each one as fake as the next.

   And yet even Symmetra had failed.  Her target, the man whom she sought to expose, turned out to be nothing but a slumlord, and although it was a dubious profession, there was nothing technically illegal about it.  So she left with nothing.  Or so she had thought.

_    Then there was the explosion.  The fire.  The screams.  The girl.  Gods, the girl. _

   There had been a little girl at the favela that served as the slumlord’s base of operations.  She couldn’t have been more than six years old, but she had shown so much promise.  She was perfect, more perfect than a child had any business being.  In fact, she had reminded Satya of herself at that age.  In another world, at another time maybe, she would have paid for the girl to go to school, raised her to believe in the power of order, trained her to make the world a better place.  But this was not that world, nor was it that time.

_    Ms. Vaswani had condemned the child.  Symmetra had saved her from condemnation. _

   At the end of the day, Ms. Vaswani and Symmetra did not have to deal with the consequences of their actions.  They did not feel, they did not think, they did not learn.  Only Satya could learn, and modify her personas accordingly.  Only Satya could feel the overwhelming sense of having betrayed a child.  Only Satya knew what it was like to look into the eyes of the girl who had rescued her, only to see her own betrayal staring back at her.

_    Betrayal?  I did not betray her.  I was trying, am trying, to save her.  Her and her parents. _

   This thought did not offer much consolation.  If she hadn’t betrayed her, then why did she get burned?  The fire was not, could not have been a coincidence.  Satya knew this because she knew how Vishkar operated in the dark.  Symmetra was her way of dealing with that information.  Symmetra did not let business become personal (this she had in common with Ms. Vaswani).  But Satya saw the look on her face when Vishkar unveiled that its plans for the city.  Satya saw the look on her parents’ face when they thought she was dead, and their look of relief when they saw she was not.  Satya saw that they looked past her lost perfection, that they were content to see her alive.

_    Alive but imperfect. _

   She thought about this assertion.  Was the child less perfect for her scars?  She had only changed superficially.  What could they have taken away from her?

_    Everything if not for me. _

_    Everything, because of me. _

   “Ms. Vaswani!  Would you kindly meet me in my office so that we can discuss your next assignment?”

   Satya looked around her, suddenly aware of her surroundings again.  She had finished cleaning.   _ Good _ .  At some point, she had sat down, in a chair she had made herself (although she could have a permanent one made, she preferred to make her own.  Vishkar’s just never were quite right).  She wondered how long she had spent unaware of her surroundings.  If the interval between the intercoms were any indication, thirty minutes had passed, and given no alternative, she chose to believe this.  Standing up and surveying her room one last time, she left for her boss’s office.


	2. Memory

   Her next mission was to be in Numbani.  Something about the government there requesting help with its new OR-15 line of protector robots.  Symmetra would go there and incorporate Vishkar technology into their weapons and defense systems.  Satya knew better than to think this was her only goal in Numbani.  After all, the city was well defended by its allies thanks to its unyielding stance as a bulwark of peace even in such tumultuous times.  And that’s not even mentioning the resolve of its citizens, who had fought, and would continue to fight, for the very freedoms the city afforded them.  Even if Numbani had suddenly decided to raise a standing army, Symmetra would not be needed, would not be sent in except as a last resort, as in Rio.  No, this had to be more complicated.

   Satya considered her options as she walked back to her cubicle.  She knew that to pry further would be seen as overreaching, and her position in the corporation was more tenuous than her superiors and even her peers would admit.  Despite all that she had contributed to Vishkar, she knew that they still saw her as flawed, someone to be removed once their interests were met.  And although they hadn’t pursued “autism research” (by which they meant the search for a means to eradicate autism) in decades, Satya knew that the corporation’s leadership had not changed its beliefs nor its composition since that time.  And so she treaded carefully.

   But this?  This was too much.  They had to know that she would not simply be told to take the role of Symmetra from the onset; they couldn’t truly believe that she would rush in without a plan to the most protected place on Earth only to sit and wait on instructions.  Even they were not so foolish.

_    There is something I’m forgetting. _

   Upon entering her room, Satya noticed that it felt  _ off _ .  She knew that she had left in a rush, but even in a rush, she would not have left her chair in the middle of the room, so far away from her desk.  In fact, it would have been a simple matter to dissipate the chair on her way out.  And judging from the scuff marks on the bottom, she had been rocking pretty heavily the last time she used it, something that she only did when she was deeply distressed.  Certainly she had not already known that her boss would send her on such a dubious mission?  No, she couldn’t have.  If only she could remember what she was thinking earlier, maybe she could understand why they were sending her on such a mission.

_    Couldn’t an intern do this?  Or a student? _

   Ensuring that Vishkar’s tech was properly integrated into the omnics’ systems was child’s play, even for the less technologically-adept of her peers.  She snickered at the thought: although once upon a time, such euphemisms brought her comfort, she had long since learned that they were only a thin veil to the insults that said peers threw around behind her back.  It was no matter, though.  She was superior to them in every aspect of her job and even theirs, for that matter.

_    Every aspect except your memory. _

   She looked around the room as she pondered this thought.  Why could she not remember something so simple as what she had been thinking not thirty minutes ago?  She did note, while she was trying to recall that particular piece of information, that the floors were perfectly clean.  She wondered if they had finally implemented the code she had written.  Maybe they weren’t so incompetent after all.  Maybe.

   Alternatively, she may have noticed dust on the floor and gone ahead and cleaned it herself.  That would make sense, Satya supposed.  After all, she knew how deeply it affected her to have dust in her room, but would that really have distressed her?  Annoyed her, certainly.  Vexed her, possibly.  But distress?  She did not think so.  She very much would like to believe that she had outgrown that, even if she knew it wasn’t strictly true.

   It was precisely then that she realized she could remember very few of the details from her mission in Rio de Janeiro.  She remembered introducing herself to the mayor - which she nailed, of course - and a very little bit of her discussion with her, but nothing after that.

_    A girl?  Was there a girl? _

   She remembered the image of a face that had affected her particularly, but she could not remember why.  For some reason, the face was accompanied by a pang of guilt, which in turn gave her chair another scuff mark.  Thank gods she designed the chair to withstand a great deal of pressure, lest it be broken underneath her.

_    Numbani.  What am I doing in Numbani? _

   And in that moment, it was decided.  She would absolutely pry the information she wanted from the corporation, and she would do it now.  And so, dismissing her chair, she walked to her desk, summoned a new one, and got to work.

   First: start with information available to the public.  Search Numbani.  Nothing on Vishkar’s site, what about Numbani’s?  Nothing there, either.  Private interests?  What security corp builds OR15s?  OR14s?  Anything???

   Okay, second step.  Now for information strictly available only to employees.  No need to start from the bottom up here, and searching through lower level employees’ archives would arouse unnecessary suspicion.  Does she have the official briefing for Numbani yet?  Yes, good, now to look through it to see where Symmetra comes into play.  Looks like she’ll be going directly into the factory to “oversee the proper implementation of Vishkar hard-light technology in new OR-15 security robots.”  Too vague.  Did this mean she was to go and ensure that the technology worked?  Or to ensure that it was implemented according to the contract?  The second was more likely, given Vishkar was, at the end of the day, a corporation that existed to make money.  Regardless of her own idealism, she was still loyal to the company, and the company wants profit.

_    They would send Ms. Vaswani if they wanted me to secure their corporate interests.  Symmetra?  She is allowed to operate outside of her orders, when necessary. _

   The thought was more comforting than she would ever admit.  They wouldn’t send her as a professional, since a professional would be too tied into the company’s profits.  More likely than not, they wanted someone who had more independence, more initiative.  And Symmetra, the agent, could ensure that the technology was implemented correctly.  So that it would be as effective as possible in protecting its citizens.  So what technology would be implemented exactly?  Hard-light would create barriers, but it could also be ammunition if Vishkar so desired.  Satya hoped her work would stay limited to barriers, but a capable security robot must be able to attack as well.  So.

_    One last check before I let this rest. _

   Looking around the room quickly, she ensured that Vishkar’s camera was still too obscured to be useful.  She had originally blocked it while practicing one of her people’s traditional dances a little too passionately while holding her photon projector.  It was an accident at first, but when she needed to circumnavigate Vishkar’s regulations, well, it came in handy.  Secure in the knowledge that Vishkar could not see what she was doing, Satya began the process of hacking into the server.

   And… success!  Perfect, now she just had to find the documents about herself.  Missions.  Upcoming.  Numbani.  And now to verify what she’d already guessed…

_    Oh.  I was not expecting  _ that.


	3. Numbani

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Satya's loyalty is tested, and she makes a decision.

_Okay.  Okay._ Okay.  _This is okay, I'm okay, everything's going to be okay._

Satya had done many things in her life, but to sabotage her own work?  That was well beyond what she was comfortable doing.  That was well beyond what Vishkar could feel comfortable asking her.  Of course, it had to be her.  No one else could do it properly, only Symmetra had the technical expertise to make it passable, to make it work.  Or, not work, as it were.  But _Gods_ , why did it have to be her?

Of course, it was reasonable.  Looking over the details of the contract, Satya saw that Numbani had not purchased half as much as Vishkar's usual minimum offer, and her assignment wasn't _technically_ illegal.  Dubious, sure.  Dangerous, most certainly.  But illegal?  Not quite.  On top of that, her suggested "solutions" were not harmful, per se, at least not directly.  The bots were originally designed by another corporation, and Vishkar's portion only involved outfitting them with shields and weaponry in case of a catastrophic event.  Of course, the city would also have other safeguards in place, any half-decent government would have myriad ways to protect its citizens at a moment's notice.

_Right?  They wouldn't let us be the last line of defense.  Surely they wouldn't.  
_

_And yet..._

And yet here she was.  Here she was deciding whether or not to sabotage the efforts of a foreign government, a _peaceful_ government, to protect its citizens.  Here she was debating how far she could go in her sabotage.  How far she would be expected to go.

Here she was, debating over what could be the lives of thousands, if not more.  How many now lived in Numbani?  Probably millions of humans, and for each one an omnic?  And she alone was being given the power to save or condemn them?  Not here, not now, obviously.  But the next time disaster struck, for in such a disordered city, disaster always strikes, they would inevitably need a formidable defense system.  Not one that would fail under pressure.  Not one that had been sabotaged.

But would their lives not be better when they inevitably became more ordered?  Vishkar offered the very order that had saved her, how many others could they save?  It was not her fault that Numbani was so chaotic, nor was it Vishkar's that Numbani had failed to recognize its own flaws.  A disaster of the proportion necessary for any sabotage to be so much as relevant would only happen - no, could only happen - in a city that failed to control its citizens.  And if it took such a disaster to show them just how wrong they were, well, maybe a few thousand lives were a small price to pay.  Not because they were worthless, but because their deaths would shield their peers from worse.

_But that's only if Numbani learns from its mistakes.  And if something catastrophic does happen.  Am I supposed to make something catastrophic happen?  Surely Vishkar won't just rely on chance.  Right?_

Satya looked at the dossier in front of her again.  It didn't say anything about causing harm directly (yet), only that she would "ensure the presence of a fatal flaw in the integration of Our technology with Numbani's OR-15 line of security robots."  So she wouldn't be causing harm, not really, just failing to prevent it from happening.  That wasn't the same thing.  Was it?

* * *

Days later when Satya was finally shipping out to Numbani, she had come no closer to a decision, although she _had_ scuffed up and replaced innumerable chairs, lost all sense of taste, and lost immeasurable amounts of sleep in the process.  What she knew was this: that Numbani had requested stewardship of Doomfist's gauntlet in response to the attack at Overwatch Museum, that the people who had attacked the museum would likely also attack Numbani soon after its delivery, and that she was going to play the pivotal role in determining the outcome of those attacks.  She also knew that her superiors had no idea that she knew any of this, nor that she had been debating whether or not to obey her orders.  At least, if they did know they had indicated so in any way.  She knew that she was expected to arrive outside the city, where it would be well into the dead of night, sneak into the factory, and await her orders.  She knew what those orders would be, and how much leeway they would give her.

These orders would have three simple rules.  The first and foremost was that the omnics' weapons and barriers must have a fatal flaw that would prevent them from functioning under stress.  The second was that this flaw could not be so prominent that the OR-15s would fail in their daily tasks, lest they be replaced without effect.  The third was that it could not be traceable to Vishkar in any way.   ~~~~The rest was up to Symmetra to decide.

 _But Symmetra does not have to live with the consequences of her actions._ I _do._

Under normal circumstances, the distinction would bring comfort; after all, Symmetra was allowed to be chaotic, was allowed to break laws and hurt people when necessary.  And, at the end of the day it was always for the greater good.  It was always to help people embrace the order that they so desperately needed.  And so Symmetra did not have to live with her actions, because Satya would always approve of them after the fact.  But now, now she was being asked to cause chaos, to become the enemy of humanity, the same enemy she had been learning to fight for twenty years now. 

And for what?  That Numbani would learn from its mistakes, would allow Vishkar to help them the way they had helped her?  The odds of that happening were slim-to-none, even if it were technically possible.  Unless Vishkar had other plans that she hadn't thought to check, of course.  Satya made a mental note to look back over Vishkar's plans and assets, or whatever she could access of them.

And what did that mean for right now?  Her destination was rapidly approaching, and she still had to make a decision.

 _How_ would _I do it?  If I were definitely going to, that is, how would I approach the problem?_

Weakening a fuse would do the trick easily.  It would melt under any serious activity, preventing any serious combat functionality.  Plus, it would still allow for normal functionality, since the demands of the omnics' daily service almost certainly would not involve protecting the city from known terrorists.  In fact, the more Satya thought about it, the better the idea seemed.  The only issue seemed to be that she would need to be able to do so en masse, but otherwise it would be simple.  Vishkar was good at many things, after all, and training its employees to work effectively with hard light was no exception.

 _But now back to the original problem: do I disobey my orders?  Do I go against Vishkar, the people who saved me, my_ friends _, in order to help the people of Numbani?  They who have chosen to live in their chaos, despite the clear disadvantages of doing so?  Or do I leave them to their fate, and embrace the ones who took me in?  Flaws, plots, and all?_

Satya considered this as her helicopter landed.  Of course, she had had many disagreements with her superiors in the past, most notably in the area of her rescue.  At first, she had wanted to stay in poverty; it was her routine, and it was her life.  How could she have embraced something new?  But Sanjay and the others had been right, in the end.  Just like they were right when they amputated her arm.  Just like they were right in Rio.

And so, just like that, it was decided.  She did not know what they had planned (although she had a rough idea of what she would do), but she knew that they had a plan.  And she knew that it was for the greater good.  Because it was always for the greater good.

And so, just like that, she walked under the cover of night to the factory, unlocked the door easily (her prosthetic did come with a number of tools, after all).

And so, just like that, she waited for her instructions, as she was bid to do.  She waited, and then she danced, a dance complex enough to target every fuse, to weave light through it, to have it emulate tin, to ensure that it lowered the wire's melting point _just_ enough.  And then?  She left, locking the door behind her.

There is a great difference, however, in rationalizing one's decision and truly understanding its implications.  Although Satya had thought of every alternative at least twice, had though about the consequences of each possible decision, she did not truly understand what she was going to do until it was done, and she was walking back to the waiting helicopter.

It was then that the weight of her decision hit her, and with it pain.  Physical and mental alike, crashing into her over and over again, radiating through her, burning and drowning her at the same time.  Worse, though, was the numbness that followed.  The same numbness that had stolen her sense of taste earlier in the week now robbed her of all sensation, save the muted shapes she followed back to the helicopter.  The only anchor she had left in the world was the same arm that she had lost so long ago, now cramped, as if by this illusion it could bring her back to reality.

Satya did not notice when they took off, nor when they landed.  Neither did she pay attention to the walk back to Vishkar; she had walked this path so many times that she need not pay its turns any mind.

* * *

 

"Do you want to forget?"

**Author's Note:**

> Edit 05/17/17: Upon further examination of the canon, I found that Satya does not say God, but gods/Gods. Fic updated to reflect this.


End file.
